


to the water

by EllsterSMASH



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Fluff, OC Kiss Week 2019, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-26 04:45:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17739263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllsterSMASH/pseuds/EllsterSMASH
Summary: Five months, since last time. Five long months since he last kissed her, right up against the trunk of a big frozen maple. Five impossibly long months since he’s looked at her like that.For OC Kiss Week 2019!! Makon belongs tobearlytolerable.





	1. daylight

She brings him back to the same river as last time. Only last time, they were camped up in the mountains where its path carved tight and cold and furious through the rock. Now, here, this time, they’re miles below the falls and the spring rains are long since done and the river is wide, and warm, and slow.

It doesn’t look like he’s changed, not that half a year could do so much to a man like Makon. He arrived yesterday morning, but Deshanna had kept him busy with news and business and whatever shit they always did. Today, however, Athi has him all to herself.

An entire apple is wedged in his teeth, plucked from a tree on their way. _Foraging,_ he had called it, despite her assurance that the orchard was spoken for.

“So,” she says, and considers her cards. “Did you miss me?”

“Does day follow night?”

He takes a bite of the yellow-red fruit and tosses it to her. It’s ripe, the flesh crisp and a little too sweet.

“Usually.”

“Always.”

Distracted, she plays the wrong card and curses under her breath but it’s already face up. “I missed you too. In case you were wondering.”

He smiles down at his hand, then up at her like he already knows.

Five months, since last time. Five long months since he last kissed her, right up against the trunk of a big frozen maple. Five impossibly long months since he’s looked at her like that.

“Have you made any progress in your studies?” he asks, ruining her perfectly good daydream.

She grimaces. “Some.”

“Athi . . .”

“It’s not none.”

He shakes his head, but at least he never calls her a fool. “There is much I would like to show you. To teach you, if you still want to learn.”

“I do!”

“Then you must first master the basic fundamentals.”

Athi huffs, picks up a card, then puts it right back down. Useless.

“I’ll show _you_ basic fundamentals.”

“Please do.”

He jerks away from the card she throws at him, chuckling as he returns it.

His win is inevitable. Her cards were shit from the start, and unfortunately, Makon is not the type of man to let her cheat—she’d found that out the hard way.

“Well played,” he says.

_Well lost._

“Another round?”

He’s already shuffling, but her heart’s not in it.

“Later.”

The river beckons. Something new, a change of pace.

Athi springs up and heads toward its sun-speckled waters, unwrapping her belt on the way. Drops it in a haphazard set of circles on the shore. She peels her tunic off as well, but leaves her smallclothes; they haven’t crossed that line yet.

“Athi, wait!”

But that is not a thing she does and she is already in, cool current sweeping past her calves, her thighs, her hips. She dives. When she surfaces, he’s at the edge, half-stripped and smiling wide.

“How is the water?” he asks.

_Perfect._

“Come find out.”

He wades in to meet her, still standing where she swims.

She glides backward, a crook of her finger drawing him further, deeper, until he pushes up off the rocky bed and they’re at last on even ground.

In as far as she is, every time she asks.

Makon dips below the surface and back up, gracefully smoothing his hair back from his face. He can be so serious, so cautious, so measured, but where his hand ends and hers begins he trusts her. Trusts that she knows herself. That her grip will hold, that her balance won’t shift. Trusts her like no one else does. Trusts her more than he should, perhaps; she did break her first bone when she was two.

“Well?” she asks.

“It is cold, though not unpleasant. And the company is certainly worth the discomfort.”

She splashes him for the compliment and darts away. They race. Talk. Chase each other. Play made-up games with no rules and no winners. He weaves her a crown of moss and she catches a fish with her bare hands and they pretend that he doesn’t have work to do and she shouldn’t be practicing her basic _fucking_ fundamentals.

Pretend that all they have to do is this slow unseparating.

And they do it as well as ever. It is a thing they’ve practiced, the undoing of all that distance. So when he catches her wrist and pulls her to him and she wraps her arms tight around his neck and breathes his breath and they collide all over again like always, she remembers.

Five months is too long, but her lips remember his. Soft. Full. Patient, but hungry. He tastes like sweet apple and river water and she tastes the same. And his hands— _oh,_ she remembers his hands. Wide and calloused and strong, devouring her skin by inches. She knows the feeling, knows the need to rediscover what she’s missed.

He carries her, dripping, to the grass and lays her down. And the sun beats down on them both, warming the broad expanse of his back and painting her closed eyelids red.


	2. twilight

The stars are out. Barely; the light’s only just gone.

“Ah, and she stirs at last.”

Makon is propped up on an elbow right beside her. Eyes soft and smiling, fingers drawing faint lines into hers.

“I thought I might have to carry you back to your aravels like a sack of grain. Well, that or settle in here for the night.”

“Hmm?” Athi stretches and struggles to sit up, rubbing at her eyes and already missing the tickle in her palm.

“You are quite a”—he takes a moment to find the right word— _“determined_ sleeper.”

“Oh. Yeah, I’ve been told.”

“Were your dreams pleasant ones, at least?”

She smirks and shrugs and rolls to straddle him, pushing his shoulder back into the grass. “Doesn’t matter. I’d rather be awake.”

“Honey-tongue,” and his great big hands find her hips.

“You would know.”

When she kisses him again—slowly and sweetly, all sentiment and romance—he does not press for more. He is half hard and she is aching, but still his lips remain gentle to match her own.

And that has been enough. All these years, stealing kisses by the handful and untethering herself in his absence. Calling him _a friend_ when the others asked what he was to her—not a lie, but not the truth. He was just a good man who made her pulse race.

Except this time had been different. These five months were longer, and she must have left her heart tied up because she’s felt him pulling on it even with so many miles and mountains between them.

“Makon?” She murmurs it into the underside of his jaw, where she can feel his blood beating beneath her lips.

“Yes, Athi.”

“Would you have made me a bed?”

“Pardon me?”

She pulls back. It's not what she meant to say.

“If I didn’t wake up.”

“Oh.” He considers it. “At the very least, I would have made you comfortable.”

“So . . . no bed.”

There’s something in the way he curls into her when he laughs, turns his face to her arm, blows his breath into her skin. Something that makes her want to sink in.

“Perhaps I would have built you a house,” he says.

“What, like walls and everything?” She snorts. “That would have made for a very confusing morning.”

“At least it would have a nice view.”

“Sure, though I can see the river fine from here.”

“I was not talking of the river”—he looks at her pointedly and her cheeks flush hot—“but I see your point.”

There was a time in the beginning when he would fluster and stammer, trip on his flattery as it tumbled out unrehearsed. Cute, she’d thought it, and endearing, but it had not lasted very long. Now his words are like his touch: sure of himself and of her and of the way they fit together.

She hopes they fit together.

“Makon?”

“Yes, Athi.”

“Are you happy?”

His eyes narrow. “That is a vague way to ask a rather complicated question.”

“With this,” she amends. “With whatever we are.”

He is quiet, rubbing circles into her hip bones.

“I am content with this arrangement,” he says finally, carefully, “so long as you are.”

“That's not what I asked.”

“Not what you asked? Or not what you wanted to hear?”

She groans and rolls off him. “Fine. New question. Do you want me or not?”

“Once again, it is not so simple as that. Of course I desire you; you must know that by now. But, since we are attempting to be honest, to ask any more of you, I would ask for your heart as well. And if that is too great a request, then perhaps it would be best if we left things as they are.”

She is silent for a long while. A few seconds, maybe, spent curled into his side, twisting the ends of her hair between her fingers.

“Makon?”

“Yes, Athi.”

“Maybe . . . maybe I want more, too.”

The conversation has sobered his expression, wrinkling his brow up tight with concern and uncertainty. But when he hears her, hints of relief peek through at the corners of his mouth.

He shakes his head. “Yes or no. Do you?”

“Yeah,” she whispers, then stronger: “Yes.”

His thumb behind her ear, and his smile breaks wide.

“Then my answer is also yes—to both your questions.”

In as far as she is, and she is falling further, deeper by the second.


	3. moonlight

He is illuminated.

Moonlight scattered on the water, haloed at his edges and she is helpless. A moth to a lantern: her hands to his hard curves. She touches him fearlessly, fingers sprawling across cool skin, thick muscle, solid bone. Sweeps his hair aside, over his shoulder, out of her way. Holds him close as his heavy palms slide along her arms.

He is beautiful.

She likes his mind, his heart, his soul, but likes this too. Likes his skin, thousands of freckles on a deep sand sea. Likes how he towers over her, bigger and stronger and gentler and _safe._ Likes the shape of his nose and the color of his eyes and the spread of his fingers. He makes her weak in the best way, and it would be a lie to say she'd never pictured him. Moving over her, or under her, sweat shared between them. Would he tie his hair back?

Does it matter?

He is smooth, solid, breathing, beating, blazing, and somehow, hers. Or something like it.

“Let me look at you,” he says.

Athi loosens her grip and steps back for his perusal. His gaze is bold and the blood rises to her cheeks as it roves her skin appreciatively.

His touch soon follows, learning her shape in a new way. Asking tender questions with hands and lips and tongue to be answered by a whimper, a gasp, a nod. It is a cool enough night, but the way he tests her—a knuckle up her spine, warm breath on her neck—sets her ablaze. The air must be rippling around them, warped by her burning.

“I hope you know,” she chokes out as his fingers pinch gently at a nipple, “I'm not this patient for just anyone.”

“Well, then,” he says from somewhere behind and above her, “I am honored.”

His cock rests at her back, hard and heavy and she twists her arm between them to reach it. Makon's touch on her breast falters as her fingers close around his shaft. She draws them lightly up toward the tip, then back down, imagining how he'll feel inside her. Squeezes experimentally and he hums in his throat.

Athi turns at the sound, pushes him away.

“Sit.”

“What happened to your patience?” he asks even as he complies, making room between his legs for her when she nudges them apart.

“It ran out.”

His chuckle at her answer strangles into a groan as she takes him in hand, then in her mouth.

His shaft is long, though not frighteningly so, with a pleasing curve to it. It does not fit in her mouth all at once.

Not yet, anyway.

She does not go slowly, though she does keep an eye on his face. It would be a shame, after all, to miss the tightening in his brow when her fingers drift downward, or the glassy way he watches her cheeks hollow out as she sucks him.

It's sloppy. Maybe not her best work but then it's been a while. And it seems selfish, greedy of her tongue to want to taste him so badly. To want to wring pleasure from his nerves until he sings the way she does. Until he understands.

Regardless, Makon doesn't seem to mind, doing his best not to buck into her efforts and to keep her hair out of her face—until she grazes the inside of his thigh with her fingernails.

“Ah!” He sits up with a start.

She does it again, and he _giggles_.

“Well, I'm sure tucking that away for later.”

Still grinning, he tugs on her arm—“Come here.”—then lies back onto the grass, guiding her to kneel astride his head. He turns his face and nips her skin and explores her with his fingers a while.

It is a slow build of delicious pressure, and soon enough she is ready to lose herself in its pursuit.

“May I try something?”

 _Yes,_ she nods. _Anything._ Feels the subtle ripple he makes in the Veil.

He touches her again, two fingers to her clit and she is awash with the sensation: a muted vibration, a buzzing around her nerves, that pressure in her core building more quickly, more urgently than before.

It's hard to find her breath.

“The fuck is that?”

He smirks, and presses his fingers deep inside her once more. “A bit of magic.”

“No shit.”

“No shit,” he repeats, and nips at her skin again.

“That's the first thing you're teaching me. Just so”—she hisses—“you know.”

“Very well.”

It can't be long, but she is overwrought already by the time his trail of open-mouthed kisses finally leads up her thigh to her swollen, sensitive pearl. The flick of his tongue is a magic all its own.

“Oh fuck, Makon, _fuck.”_ She giggles to herself, hand threaded into his hair. “Who's the honey-tongue now, hm?”

With a vice-like grip, he pulls her to his mouth without room for resistance, not that she particularly wants to try. He is smothering himself in her and she finds herself more than happy to let him.

Lips and tongue, he builds her up higher and ever higher and she is shaking, sweat pooling behind her knees and dripping between her breasts, the muscles in her legs quivering with the effort of staying upright but still he licks and sucks until she comes at last with a sharp, shuddery cry.

She is adrift for a few eternal moments, then the waves subside and he helps her lie down beside him, all body and no bones.

His mouth to hers and she tastes herself there. Then he pulls one leg up over his hip and all she can do is whisper _please_ against his lips before he slowly slides into her heat.

After so much stimulation, she's not expecting to feel the stretch—that sweet mellow burn as she opens around him. It is a good sort of surprise. She’s still sensitive; the friction is almost too much and yet not nearly enough. Not even close. Each time he thrusts, each time further, deeper into her by a fraction, she wants more. Demands more.

And then there is no more left to take.

 _“Kaffas,”_ he groans. “Perfect. You are perfect.”

No. No, she is the farthest thing from it, but she doesn’t correct him. He doesn't mean it anyway, so she murmurs his name, instead, in his ear. Filled and satiated, it's the most she can manage.

This part is easy: closeness and warmth and slippery skin, and their hips rocking together. He moves inside her but never leaves.

He surrounds her. Long limbs and his pulse throbbing wild next to her own. Beyond him, the grass and the dirt and the breeze-blown whispering branches. The forest’s night-song, and smoke from a fire burning somewhere in the distance, and the whisper of their slow warm wide summer river.

Her core flutters, hums, ignites.

“I'm . . . oh, no, I don't think I can do that again,” she says and buries her face into his neck.

Makon kisses her hair, damp as it is. “Oh, I think you can.”

His pace quickens, closer in time now with her heartbeat than her breathing, and the ascent quickens with it. It is far nearer than she thought, this second summit. Far easier to reach. She climbs with every brush of his skin against her own, every lovely filthy word he leaves in her ear, every hungry squeeze of his hand on her ass.

It swells over her with less warning and more fanfare than the first time, pleasure bright and bursting iridescent. Leaves her floating, sinking, sobbing. Nails and teeth, she clutches him desperately, anchored safely to him as he spills into her.

And they stay there. Joined together while his breath, heavy, slows and settles. He runs his fingers through her hair and kisses her with less yearning, less heat, but more affection. Smacks her ass to bring her back and make her smile. A few last lazy thrusts then he pulls out, leaving her empty, the hot trickle of his spend and her slick mixing on her inner thigh.

If she could have her way, they'd be just like this come morning. Naked and tangled. But this is not a secret place by any means, and though their acts are hardly taboo, there are some things she’d like to keep for herself.

So she lets him lead her back to the water. Brisk and refreshing, it rinses away most of the mess they've made of each other.

“Well,” he says once they're dry and dressed, “what comes next?”

_Fuck if I know._

“Tomorrow, usually.”

He laughs and hugs her close, pressing his lips to her forehead.

“Always.”


End file.
